Kokinshu #158
Friday, 4 November 2011 07:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer (from the same contest)
Might it be because
his dear one has gone into
the summer mountains?
-- this cuckoo who is raising
his voice aloud and crying.
natsuyama ni
koishiki hito ya
irinikemu
koe furi-tatete
naku hototogisu
---L.
Might it be because
his dear one has gone into
the summer mountains?
-- this cuckoo who is raising
his voice aloud and crying.
—10 October 2011
Original by Ki no Akimine, about whom we know almost nothing beyond that he presumably was alive for the 893 contest and he has two poems in the Kokinshu. ¶ If you assume the speaker is projecting his personal situation onto the bird (and this feels even more likely than for #157), the usual reason for an aristocrat to "enter" the mountains was a religious retreat, typically done by men rather women -- so Akimine is either missing a beloved friend (the usual interpretation) or using a female persona. Why the mountain bird doesn't just follow its beloved is obscure. And, yes, the crying really is described that wordily.natsuyama ni
koishiki hito ya
irinikemu
koe furi-tatete
naku hototogisu
---L.